Joey Porter returns to Colorado State as assistant football coach

Jul. 31, 2013

Former CSU standout Joey Porter, center, is pictured during the spring game in April. / Rich Abrahamson/Coloradoan library

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Four-time Pro Bowl linebacker Joey Porter is returning to CSU to do something he wasn’t able to in the late 1990s — complete his liberal arts degree. He’ll also help coach the Rams’ football team while he’s at it.

Porter, who played for Colorado State University from 1995-98, was 18 credits shy of graduating following his senior season, but as he prepared for the ’99 NFL draft, his focus on studies took a secondary role to what everyone knew would be an impressive professional career. Now he has a chance finish what he started in ’95 while volunteering on as an unpaid undergraduate student assistant for CSU coach Jim McElwain.

“My last semester was a hectic semester because I had Senior Bowls, I had to go down to the combine. The last semester, I focused on getting ready to be a professional football player, so some of those classes I never really finished,” Porter said. “Getting my degree is the biggest thing. It’s good for me to have; it’s good for me to stress to my kids. I went to college but didn’t graduate. Now I can finish my whole story.

“What I’m really going back for is to work on my degree. To be able to work with the football team is an extra gift that Coach Mac gave to me.”

Despite CSU’s locker room being named after him, Porter called himself the “low man on the totem pole” as he begins coaching, saying he’s willing to help out in whatever way McElwain needs. Coaching was a career path he’d always been interested in, but outside of working with his son’s little league team, Porter has been away from football since his retirement in 2011.

He finished his career at CSU with 20 sacks, 14 as a senior in ’98 — which ranks second in school history for a single season. Following his time at CSU, he was drafted in the third round of the NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he spent eight seasons and won a Super Bowl.

After Pittsburgh, Porter spent three seasons with the Miami Dolphins before finishing his NFL career with the Arizona Cardinals from 2010-11.

What role he’ll play as a coach hasn’t been determined, but Porter said he just wants to absorb everything he can from the sidelines to help improve his coaching in the long run.

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“I’m just a sponge, soaking it all up. Just to give me the opportunity to figure out if this is what I really want to do — and I know it is,” Porter said. “But it’s part of paying your dues and sitting back. The coaching part, though, is extra. The main thing is getting my degree, but to get to work with the kids — have a little input — that will be fun for me. And being back in football is good for me.”

Porter, his wife and four kids have all moved to Fort Collins, and he said everyone was glad to make the move. Beyond returning to the school he helped solidify on the college football map under former coach Sonny Lubick, to be back in Colorado overwhelms him with excitement.

“It’s a different way I look at Colorado now than I did as a student. When I was here as a student, I just had a small circle around the campus I didn’t really leave from,” Porter said. “Now, with me being an adult, I never really understood how beautiful Colorado is, so I’m so excited to come back and be a part of the community and raise my family here.

“I never realized I had such a gem here waiting for me.”

Porter will be inducted to the CSU athletics Hall of Fame this season.